One Sunday, years ago, I was reading "The New York Times Book Review" and was struck by the quality of the writing. I started to copy any sentence that caught my eye, and then I formed them into poems. Two of them have survived because I incorporated them into a short play. I entered "The Germans" into a poetry slam and had my teenaged actress daughter read it. It won first prize, and I was too embarrassed to explain its genesis. I always felt a little guilty. I suppose they are like ChatGP poems written thirty years before ChatGP.


THE GERMANS

The Germans in this country are always homesick.
They live in the neighborhood of plain work.
Their only drink now is vodka,
It's like they are talking poetry most of the time.
They say why persist in using language when silence is so sweet.
We could so easily have become friends and drunk hours away over buttered tea.

There are such strange beliefs here.
They say every organ in the body
Can influence every other organ in the body
But it takes six brawny men to drag the heart out 
With flensing hooks
While in the corner grows an odd mushroom
As big as a human head
With a mind as small as a soup spoon.

In the neighborhood of plain work
Grows an odd mushroom as big as a human head.
No one weeps over it.
It is so hard and deep that they have to face it
Without the consolation of tears.

Pious people face life without the consolation of tears.
After they have been completely underwater
They believe that they are all clean.
They can never sin again.
But when the close order knuckle drill goes down
They will not hesitate to mix in.

Sources from The New York Times Book Review 12/29/91
Susan Carter Vogel, NEWS FROM THE LAND OF FREEDOM, Cornell University Press
Edward Shorter, FROM PARALYSIS TO FATIGUE, The Free Press
Gordon Weaver, THE NOVELLA AND SIX STORIES, TriQuarterly Books
Diane Ackerman, THE MOON BY WHALELIGHT, Random House
Susan Engberg, SARAH'S LAUGHTER AND OTHER STORIES, Alfred A. Kbopf
Can Xue, Translated by Ronald R. Janssen and Jian Zhang, OLD FLOATING CLOUD, Nortwestern University Press
Helen Bevington, THE WORLD AND THE BO TREE, Duke University Press


THE DYLANISTS

You Dylanists believe in feelings
Cause your causes they are all dead
While Sarah lives in the subway
With dangerous feelings in her head.

She gets on the train with her trumpet.
She says she's just arrived from Mars.
She'll play 'til she has the money to return.
She wanders through the cars.

Two sailors in fro Tahiti
Talk of Charleston dancing libertines
Made crazy by the fear of going insane
From those Polynesian scenes.

A youthful band of junkies
Jumps up and laughs right in her face.
She recalls her many old friends
Who've disappeared without a trace.

The cop poisons her garden.
It used to be a vast tree farm.
But her rumba dancing talent
Lets her wiggle out of harm.

The poison squad of whisperers
Say backbone is what she needs.
But that is dangerous talk.
She doesn't know where it leads.

She remembers rusty trailers
And many grotesque things
That old men seem to understand.
The ugly child just sings.

Her memory is her penance.
She knows it will never end.
She glimpses earthly paradise
As the train goes round the bend.

New York Times Book Review 1/5/92


Theodore Ziolkowski, reviewer, THE TRAINING GROUND
Alison Carb Sussman, reviewer, RACHEL'S SONGS
Zofia Smardz, reviewer, THE FIFTH CORNER OF THE ROOM
Calvin Sims, reviewer, SUBWAY LIVES
Kathleen M. Blee, WOMEN OF THE CLAN, Univ. of California Press
David Howard Bain, reviwer, THE DRAGON AND THE CROSS
Debra Barracca and Sal Barracca, MAXI, THE HERO, Dial Books
Joan Hess, MORTAL REMAINS IN MAGGODY, Dutton
Marilyn Stasio, reviewer, PEL AND THE MISSING PERSONS
Brian Morton, THE DYLANIST, HarperCollins Publishers
Anthony Burgess, reviewer, A SHAKESPEARE MUSIC CATALOG
Christopher Heion, THE TANGO PLAYER, Translated by Philip Boehm, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
John Talmadge, reviwer, LAND OF THE EAGLE

Some of Sarah's dialogue is based on a FRONTLINE story aired on PBS